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– [Announcer] Executive leadership. Industry news-makers. Top producer insights. This is NFM TV.
– Welcome in to another edition of NFM TV. I am your host Greg Sher, delighted to bring forward another edition of our top producer series. Joining me right now from Westminster, Colorado, is NFM’s very own Jessica Uphoff. Jessica, how are you?
– I’m doing well, Greg. Thank you for having me.
– It’s a pleasure to have you, and congratulations on your recent nomination, one of the top 100 female loan originators in the entire country, by Scotsman’s Guide.
– Thank you.
– You are very welcome. I wanna talk about your success, and I wanna share it with the world. In 2018, you managed to close, personally, upwards of $85,000,000, close to 300 units. I’m just gonna throw it out there, a very simple question: how, how can one producer, one person, do that kind of volume?
– Well, one, you have to have a really good team, so I attribute a lot of my success to my amazing team. Two, you have to have good partners, and you have to show them value every single day. So I think just being a good lender, unfortunately, is not enough. You have to be able to help those business partners, whatever they need help with as a partner, and then they treat you like a partner and refer business like a partner. So having really fantastic, deep relationships with high-producing individuals that you’re adding a lot of value to on a daily basis.
– Great answer, thank you for sharing that. Some producers like to get as many real estate agents as they can, whether they do one deal or three deals, or 100 deals a year. I’m getting the sense from you that that’s not in your playbook.
– Yeah, I really focus on people that do a lot of volume. We just tend to be a better fit for one another, because we, you know, my team and I can go at a really high velocity, so we tend to support the bigger producers better. We will work with anybody and take loans from anybody, but that tends to be our top partners, our high-producing, very successful agents locally here in Denver.
– You mentioned a moment ago that one of the secrets to your success is bringing value to your referral partners. Can you give us a window into that? What does that look like? What are some of the things you do to peel back those layers and go deeper?
– If I ever get any indication that my business partners need anything, like if I hear how they’re talking to me and it is nothing loan-related, I’m trying to help them with that thing. So, for example, I had a business partner that told me he wanted to get in with builders, and I personally brought two builders to him, and he handled both of those accounts. So not only did I introduce him to the builder, but I also sold him very strongly so that the builder would hire him to sell all the units for that builder. So that’s one example. I’ve interviewed team members for my realtor partners, I help them put on events, I help them, all kinds of stuff. I mean, you name it, we’ve done it to support people. We also, we try to bring people together. That’s helpful and add value to a lot of different people. So for example, I put on a March Madness event here in March for my male realtors and builders, and I try to introduce a lot of the realtors and builders since they kind of run in different circles. So when I was calling my male realtors, I was like, “Hey, should really be there, “I’m gonna have seven builders there.” And then the builders want to meet realtors so that they can get their models, you know, exposure in the market, so then I’m like, “Hey builders, I have “the top agents in town that’ll be there.” So I kind of used them each as bait to get the other one there, and then have a really successful, fun party.
– That sounds amazing. Thank you for sharing that. You also mentioned your team and how important they are. What are some of the components that they help support you and your brand with?
– Yeah, like my role on the team is, I’m responsible to care for our partners, and kind of meet our partners’ needs, and then my team really helps me support me with our clients. So I meet with all of our clients face-to-face, and then the team really does everything else around me to make sure that we qualify our clients accurately. We put together a very good loan package, and make the client experience as painless and efficient as possible. So that’s what the team’s responsibility is.
– Jessica, I wanna ask you about the role of social media.
– Sure.
– It is obviously moving at light speed right now. What role, if any, does that play in your success, and do you foresee it playing in your future success?
– Yeah, we use social media lot. Any time we have an event, all we do, the days of us placing a bunch of phone calls are kind of come and gone. Like, we will sell out a Lunch and Learn online. So yeah, we use social media for everything. Everybody is now online on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and a lot of people are spending a lot of time. Our younger community of future home-buyers spend more time there than in the more traditional marketing ways like print and things like that. So I feel like there’s such a huge opportunity for those of us that kind of stay with the times, and stay cutting-edge. So my goal with using those platforms is to be able to actually scream louder of what we do here that’s so special. You know, I think that our team, we bring something to the industry that is so unique and I think that the social media allows us to get that word out to more people faster than just placing phone calls and office pop-ins the old-school way.
– Before we say good-bye, for those people that are out there watching, that are two to three-unit producers, that just can’t seem to get over that proverbial hump, some words of wisdom from someone who’s far exceeded that hump.
– Yeah, I would focus on your green time. So green time is your face-to-face with a client, face-to-face with a referral partner, or you’re on the phone with one of them. And the, I call it red work, so submitting your loans to processing, looking at income docs, all the other stuff we have to do as originators, do that during non-business hours. That’s how I built my business by myself before I had a team, is, I would do sales all day, and then I’d do my red time at night, and then I afforded myself a team member when I was doing about eight to 10 loans a month by myself. So I would focus on making sure, because you can be very, very busy, and not really very profitable or efficient, so I think if you focus on, I’m gonna be doing all day long green activities, you will definitely do more than three units a month.
– Great. I’d be remiss if I lastly don’t ask you how NFM has impacted your trajectory and your success at this point in your career.
– NFM has been an amazing addition for my team and I. In our previous world, it was a little harder to get loans done, and now it is so easy to get loans done at NFM, which we were just so grateful for. And the people are amazing, so even if you do have an issue of any sort, it’s a team effort between us and NFM to resolve it, and we have all hands on deck, it’s amazing.
– All right, well, of course, NFM’s so delighted to have you here, both from the perspective of being an awesome person and also an awesome producer, you’ve got it all. Jessica Uphoff, NFM’s branch manager in Westminster, Colorado, and this month’s top producer feature. Thank you so much for being with us.
– Thanks Greg.
– All right, we’ll talk to you soon. I’m Greg Sher, so long, we’ll see you next time.